
LETTER 



TO 



HON. N. G. TAYLOR, 

COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, 

FROM 



EDWARD I ) . NEILL, 

LATE SECRETARY MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OEEICE. 
1868. 





\ 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE ABORIGINES. 



LETTER 



TO 



HON. N. G. TAYLOR, 

COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, 



FROM 



E D W A. R D D. NEILL, 

LATE SECRETARY MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1868. 



The Commissioner of Indian Affairs finds in the following letter, conveniently grouped, 
a number ot facts, frequently needed for reference not only in the Indian Office, but by all 
interested in the preservation and elevation of the aborigines. 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



Washington, D. C, November 10, 1868. 

Dear Sir: 

At a council held by you with some of the Ojibways, at the agency 
on Crow Wing river, about the middle of last September, I happened 
to be present, as one of the board of visitors appointed by the Presi- 
dent of the United States to inspect the condition of the Pembina 
and Red Lake bands of the Ojibway* tribe, and I was much impressed 
with the judiciousness of the advice that you gave to the benighted 
men who sat around your chair. 

Since then, I have reflected much on the effort and failure to elevate 
the aborigines in the scale of humanity. 

It must be admitted that past generations of white men have not 
been indifferent to the welfare of the red men of America, 

With the earliest plantations comprised within the limits of the United 
States, commenced the effort to civilize the neighboring Indians. One 
of the objects in colonizing Virginia, mentioned in the charter of 1606, 
granted by James the First, to Hakluyt, Prebendary of Westminster, 
and associates, was to "bring the infidels and savages living in those 
parts to human civility and a settled and quiet government." Our 
forefathers at the outset shrank from the cruel coercive policy of 
the Spaniards in South America and in their own language f employed 
" fair and loving means suited to our English natures." 

The author of the " New Life of Virginia," printed in 1612, says : " This 
is the work that we first intended and have published to the world, to be 
chief in our thoughts, to bring those infidel people from the worship of 
devils to the service of God. And this is the knot that you must untie, 
or cut asunder, before you can conquer those sundry impediments, that 
will surely hinder all other proceedings, if this be not first preferred. 

" Take their children and train them up with gentleness ; teach them 
our English tongue and the principles of religion ; win the elder sort by 
wisdom and discretion; make them equal with your English in case of 
wealth, protection, and habitation, doing justice on such as shall do them 
wrong. Weapons of war are needful, I grant, but for defence only, and 
not in this case. If you seek to gain this victory upon them by strata- 
gems of war, you shall utterly lose it and never come near it, but 
shall make their names odious to all their posterity. Instead of iron and 

*The Odjibwek were called by the French Otchipouek ; by the British, Chippeweighs or 
Chippeways. The American name, Chippewa, should not be pronounced Chippewaw, but 
the final a should have the long sound. 

tNova Britannia. London, 1609. 



4 EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



steel, you must have patience and humanity to manage their crooked 
nature to your form of civility, for as our proverb is, 1 Look ; how you win 
them so you must wear them.' If by way of peace and gentleness, then 
shall you always range them in love to your wards, and in peace with 
your English people; and by proceeding in that way, shall open the 
springs of earthly benefits to them both, and of safety to yourselves." 

Before the passengers of the May Flower landed at Plymouth Rock, 
collections had been taken up in the churches of England for the training 
of the children of the savages of Virginia in virtue and civility. 

EARLIEST LEGISLATION AND CONTRIBUTIONS. 

Among the enactments of the first legislative assembly in America, 
convened at Jamestown on July 30, 1619, was the following : 

u Be it enacted by this present assembly. That for laying a surer foun- 
dation of the conversion for the Indians to the Christian religion, each 
town, city, borough and particular plantation, do obtain unto themselves 
by just means a certain number of the natives' children to be educa- 
ted by them in true religion and a civil course of life ; of which children 
the most towardly boys in wit and graces of nature to be brought up by 
them in the first elements of literature, so as to be fitted for the college 
intended for them, that from thence they may be sent to that work 
of conversion." * 

A wealthy person in London gave in February, 1620, £500 for the 
maintenance of a number of young Indians, who were to be instruc- 
ted in reading and the principles of Christianity until they were twelve 
years of age,, and then, as occasion offered, " to be trained and brought u]| 
in some lawful trade, with all humanity and gentleness, until the age of on< 
and twenty years," f and then to enjoy the liberties and privileges o: 
Englishmen. Three things were recognized as indispensable to advance 
ment in civilization : a rejection of heathenism, the following of a lawful trade, 
and subjection to English laws, with the privileges of citizens. To raise 
these people in the scale of humanity, George Thorpe, a man of piety and 
culture, having been one of the gentlemen of the King's privy chamber, 
sacrificed the comforts of home and became the superintendent of Indian 
education at Henrico.i: In 1621 he gave most cheering accounts of his 
labors and supposed that Opechankano, the successor of Powhatan, 
desired to be instructed in the Christian religion, and yet at that very 
time he was forming a combination to exterminate the English from 
Virginia, and in less than a year the bloody massacre took place, the 
perusal of the narrative of which still makes one shudeler, and among 
the first to be scalped and mangled was the kind friend who had caused 
a house to be built for the chief, and in every way sought to promote his 
comfort. 



* See journal of the Assembly published by N. Y. Historical Society, 
t Manuscript records of London Company in Library of Congress. 
+ Stith's Virginia. 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



5 



VIRGINIA MASSACRE IN 1G22. 

Wliile white men engaged in trade with the Indians at that early 
period were sometimes unjust and violent toward the natives, yet the 
majority of the settlers were friendly and the Indian had no fear as he 
passed from plantation to plantation. Their priests or sacred men had 
however, viewed the advent of the European to their shores with sadness. 
They foresaw that their occupation would be gone should industry and 
intelligence prevail among their tribes, and it was their delight to foment 
suspicions, and stir up ill-feeling toward the planters. Powhatan, 
persuaded by his priest s, slaughtered the first plantation of white men at 
Boanoke in North Carolina,* and his successor, under the same stimulus, 
fearing that he would lose his power over the tribe, if his people became 
land-holders and fellow citizens with the new comers, resolved to exter-' 
minate the pale-faces from the valley of the James river. 

The divines and public men of the London company were so shocked 
and surprised when the intelligence of the Indian atrocities was received, 
that they abandoned their mild policy and felt that it was a Christian 
duty to cast out the heathen, and wrote to the colonial authorities to 
urge a war of extermination.f A letter writer, also of that day, used 
the folio wiug strong language : 

" We have sent boys among them to learn their language, but they 
return worse than they went ; but I am no statesman, nor love to meddle 
with anything but my books, but I can find no probability by this course 
to draw them to goodness ; but I am persuaded if Mars and Minerva go 
hand in hand they will effect more good in an hour than those verbal Mer- 
curiaus in their lives, and till their priests and ancients have their throats 
;ut there is no hope to bring them to conversion."! 

LABORS OF JOHN ELIOT. 

During the infancy of the settlements around Boston no systematic 
effort was made to elevate the Indians of New England, although a few 
)f their children were trained in English families, and became " painsful 
ind handy" in certain household duties and minor industrial arts. Eliot, 
lowever, in 1646, with a holy enthusiasm, determined to devote himself 
;o the welfare of the natives. He established schools, translated the 
scriptures, organized communities with laws such as prevailed among 
ohe whites, and taught the men to mow grass, saw boards, and build 
aouses. For a few years the progress was surprising, and the Jesuit 

* Strachey, in " History of Tiavaile into Virginia," who was secretary of Lord Delaware, 
jays: "His Majesty hath been acquainted that the men, women and children of the first 
olantation at Roanoak were, by commandment of Puwhatan, he persuaded thereto by his 
priests, miserably slaughtered, without any offence given by the first planted, who 20 and 
odd years had peaceably lived intermixt with those savages, and were out of his territory." — 
Haltluyt Publications, vol. 6. p. 85. 

tThe letter of the London Company has been in manuscript for "nearly 250 years and is 
iiow in the library of Congress. It is printed for the first time as an appendix to this com- 
munication, as it illustrates the extreme measures which men under excitement will advocate. 

X Smith's General History. 



6 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



Dreuilettes* visited the field and witnessed the labors of the Puritan 
with gratification. But, as the novelty ceased, the Indians began to slide 
back to the customs of their forefathers, and contributors in England 
for the support of the mission were dissatisfied with the meagre results. t 
Daniel Gookin, formerly a prominent citizen of Virginia, moved to 
Massachusetts and became major general and superintendent of Indian 
affairs, and was the esteemed friend of Eliot, jet, in commenting upon 
the work, after it had progressed for many years, said : u In truth the 
design was prudent, noble, and good, but it proved ineffectual to the end 
proposed," and when the Indian war under the Chief Philip began, the 
intelligent native who had been pressman in the printing of the first 
edition of Eliot's Bible, left the office and joined his savage relatives 
against the whites. 

EDUCATION OF THE MOHAWKS. 

Early in the 18th centuryj schools were opened for the Mohawks of 
New York, but after a brief period the youth grew weary of instruction, 
and those who had lived in families, learned the English language, and * 
made some progress in the useful arts and agriculture, on attaining to 
manhood discarded the white man's dress, and assumed the robe and 
customs of their fathers. § 

INDIAN SCHOOL AT WILLIAMSBURG. 

After the College of William and Mary was chartered, Virginia having 
recovered from the shock of the massacres, made another effort to improve 
the condition of the natives, but after years of trial one of the professors 
of that institution wrote : 

" The Indians who are upon Mr. Boyle's foundation have now a hand- 

* Dreuilettes in his journal says : " On my way I reached Roxbury, where the minister, 
named master Helioc, received me in his house. He treated me with respect and affection, 
and invited me to pass the winter with him." 

t The printed statements relative to Eliot's labors attracted the attention of Parliament, and 
on March 17, 1647, a committee were directed to prepare an ordinance for the encourage- 
ment of learning and piety in New England. In July, 1649, a society was chartered to 
maintain schools for the children of American Indians, and a collection ordered in the par- 
ishes of England and Wales. This society furnished the funds to print the Bible in one of the 
Indian dialects, and in their letters to the Commissioners of the United Colonies they frequently 
express disappointment that the progress of colonizing the Indians was so slow. 

The society for a brief period suspended operations, but by the efforts of the Puritan Rich- 
ard Baxter and others, was rechartered in 1661, and Robert Boyle made president, for the 
purpose of teaching Indian children the English tongue, and for placing them at "some 
lawful trade, mystery, or calling." This corporation built the Indian college at Cambridge, 
Massachusetts. 

t King William of England, in 1701, granted a charter for the " society for the propagation 
of the gospel in foreign parts," and among their first acts was to establish a mission among 
the Iroquois. Freeman, the Calvinist clergyman who had instructed some Indians, was 
asked to be their missionary, and declined, but he translated for them the morning and eve- 
ning service of the Book of Common Prayer. In 1712 the services of Mr. Andrews were 
secured, and he was stationed among the Mohawks. 

§ Humphrey's " History of the Society for Propagating the Gospel," &c 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



7 



some apartment for themselves and their master, built near the college, 
which useful contrivance ought to be carried on to the utmost advantages 
in the real education and conversion of infidels ; for hitherto but little 
good has been done therein, though abundance of money has been laid 
out, and a great many endeavors have been used, and much pains taken 
for that purpose. 

" The young Indians procured from the tributary or foreign nations 
were formerly boarded and lodged in the town, where abundance of them 
used to die, either by change of provision and way of life, or, as some 
would have it, for want of proper necessaries and due care taken with 
them. Those of them that have escaped well, and been taught to read 
and write, have for the most part returned to their homes, some with 
and some without baptism, where they follow their own savage customs 
and heathenish rites. A few of them have lived as servants among the 
English, or loiter and idle away their time in laziness and mischief 1 '' 

WHEELOCK'S SCHOOLS AT LEBANON AND HANOVER. 

The Eev. Dr. Wheelock, of Lebanon, Connecticut, with the enthusiasm 
of Eliot, a century later, commenced the education of Indian boys for 
schoolmasters, among the tribes, and also desired, to use his words : 

" That a number of girls should be instructed in whatever was neces- 
sary to render them fit for housewives and tailoresses, to acompany these 
youth when they shall be hundreds of miles distant from the English, 
and prevent a necessity of turning savages in their manner of living, 
for want of those who may do those offices for them, and by this means 
support the reputation of their mission, and also recommend to the sav- 
ages a more rational and decent mode of living than that which they are in, 
and thereby, in time, remedy and remove that great and hitherto insu- 
perable difficulty, their constant rambling about, so constantly complained 
of by all our missionaries as the great impediment in their way to suc- 
cess." 

In 1770 he removed his school to Hanover, New Hampshire, so as to 
be nearer to the tribes and more distant from degraded white men, but 
his years of toil brought forth little fruit, and during the American rev- 
olution twenty- seven out of fifty pupils returned to savage life. 

OPINION OF BRAINERD AND PENN. 

The religious world has honored the devotion of the Brainerds to the 
poor Indians in the valley of the Delaware.* With a self-sacrifice truly 

* The Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge of Scotland turned their attention to 
the Indians of America, and under their auspices labored Jonathan Edwards, John Sergeant, 
David and John Brainerd. David Brainerd in 1743 commenced his labors at New Lebanon, 
a few miles west of Stockbridge, Massachussetts, then went to the valley of the Delaware. 
After his death his brother continued the mission. In 1747, fifty-three children were in school, 
half of whom could read. In .1753 Brainerd wrote : "lam getting some of the boys sent out to 
learn trades, and purpose shortly to set up a working school for girls, at which they must be 
taught to spin and knit." 



8 



EFFOET AND FAILUKE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



apostolic, they labored for these heathen people, and, it is true, met with 
some success. John, the younger brother, for more than twenty years was 
active in their midst, and solicited the provincial legislature of New Jer- 
sey to erect a grist-mill, blacksmith's shop, and trading-house, under 
proper supervision, among the Indians, to prevent their going to the 
white settlements for goods, there to become victims of the sharper and 
groggery-keeper. Yet in his old age Brainerd wrote to Wheelock, Pres- 
ident of the Indian academy at Hanover, New Hampshire, these sad 
words : 

u I am greatly distressed often. There is too much truth in that com- 
mon saying, ' Indians will be Indians.' v 

William Penn, on his arrival at the site of the city of Philadelphia, 
was affected by the degradation and cunning of the children of the forest, 
and in a letter to Robert Boyle, the distinguished philosopher, said : 
" In treaties about land or traffic, I find them deliberative in council and 
as designing as I have ever observed among the politest of our Europeans. 
I have bought two large tracts and had two presented me, which cost me 
alike.' 7 * 

EFFORTS OF THE JESUITS. 

While English Protestants on the Atlantic coast were laboring for the 
natives' welfare, French Catholics were zealously striving for the same 
end in the region of the great lakes. The black robe of a ceremonial 
religion, with manipulations and genuflections, the swinging of the censer, 
and elevation of the crucifix, at first had great attractions for the wonder- 
loving savage, especially as in inculcating the lessons of Christianity, 
Father Marquette, the explorer of the Mississippi, and others, allowed 
them to retain certain sacrifices to imaginary spirits which appeared 
harmless.! But notwithstanding the accommodating spirit of the Jesuit 
and Franciscan, they were not as successful as the unbending Puritan 
with fewer and simpler rites. Their missions among the Ojibways 
never attained solidity or prominence, and the first schools west of Lake 
Superior were established at Pokeguma, Leech and Sandy Lakes, by 
the Calvinists, Ayer, Hall, and Boutwell,| more than a century after the 
disappearance of the Jesuits. Shea, in his devout history of Eoman 
Catholic missions, remarks: "Father Menard had projected a Sioux mis- 
sion, Marquette, Allonez, Dreuilletes, all entertained hopes of realizing it, 

* Life and works of Boyle. 

t In the Relation of 1669-'70, Marquette, in a letter to his superior, says that the Indians 
make no feast without sacrifices, and adds, " je garde un peu de leur continue, et jen ote ce 
qui est de mal." 

X In 1830, Mr. Ayer came to La Pointe on Lake Superior. The Eev. Sherman Hall arrived 
in August, 1831. At the request of Mr. Aitkeu, trader at Sandy Lake, Minnesota, in 1832, 
Mr. Ayer opened a school at that post. In October, 1833, the Reverend W. T. Boutwell, a 
graduate of Dartmouth college, who had been chaplain of the Schoolcraft expedition in 1832, 
to Lac la Biche, proceeded to Leech Lake and established the first mission in Minnesota 
west of the Mississippi. 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



9 



and had some intercourse with that nation, hut none of them ever suc- 
ceeded in establishing a mission.* 

From this brief retrospect, which might have been enlarged to the 
dimensions of a volume, it is clear that there has been no lack of effort 
upon the part of good men to raise from their squalid state the 
aborigines of America. What then has been the cause of the failure ? 

CAUSES OF FAILURE. 

Many find no difficulty in answering this query, and promptly reply, 
they have been corrupted by the white men who have lived in their 
midst. It is impossible to offer an apology for a class of whites who will 
deliberately take up their abode with a dirty band of savages, the hair 
of whose women is alive with vermin. While there may be, and we hope 
are, some exceptions, as a class, they are scapegraces, or "lewd fellows 
of the baser sort," yet, if the voyageurs of the last two centuries had never 
sang obscene songs nor indulged in Corinthian orgies around their camp- 
fires, if they had been even the very elect of God, it does not follow that 
the Indian maidens would have become Christian women, and that lazy 
men of the tribes would have been transformed to industrious hewers of 
wood and drawers of water. 

WANT OF HOMES. 

The causes of our failure in civilizing them lie back of their intercourse 
with rascally and besotted white men. First, they have had no fixed 
habitations. The glorious gospel of Jesus Christ finds no lodgment 
among wandering tribes. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, confined his 
labors to those in the basin of the Mediterranean sea who had some 
fixedness, whose houses were more solid than birch bark, buffalo skins, 
or coarse mats supported by slender poles. No missionary society has 
thrown money and life away by sending men to follow the wandering 
Arabs. Yet our people have talked of civilizing Indians who are vaga- 
bonds like Cain, who hunt one day at one place, and fish the next day 
at another point miles distant, who only dwell in tents when cold or 
storms or darkness prevent their roaming about. The directors of the 
great fur companies have prated about their wish to elevate the Indian, 
and yet they have known that it could not be done, and their occupation 
be preserved. If the poor Indian had been made to love a locality, to value 
a homestead, he could not have been induced to hunt, and they could 
not have collected peltries for the wants of London, Paris, Vienna, and 
New York, and the families of Astor and Chouteau would never have 
become enriched by the Indian trade. Trench and other writers define 
proverbs as the quintessence of wisdom. " First catch the hare, then 
tame him," is the maxim that has been forgotton in our dealing with the 
red man. D'Iberville, the first governor of Louisiana, in 1702 wrote to 

* Charlevoix states that the Ursuline nuns of Quebec at first educated Indian girls, but 
soon abandoned the work, disheartened by the fact that after leaving- the convent they 
relapsed, and were worse than heathen. 



10 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



the authorities in Paris: "No Frenchman should he allowed to follow 
the Indians on their hunts, as it tends to keep them hunters, as is seen 
in Canada, and when they are in the woods they do not desire to become 
tillers of the soil."* 

This sentiment has been reiterated by every philanthropist for one 
hundred and fifty years, yet the United States, succeeding the French in 
the occupation of the Mississippi valley, year after year have been tied 
to the heels of fur traders, and powerless as the blind Sampson bound 
by the fetters of the Philistines and grinding in the prison-house. 

The* traders have winked at reservations for the Indians, talked 
piously at Washington, seen that the best land was selected, waxed fat 
on contracts for saw-mills and other improvements, then managed, after 
a few years, to have the lands sold and another treaty made by which 
they were paid old debts, and a fresh start made in the race after riches. 
Not many years ago I saw the Winnebagoes moving away from Turkey 
river, Iowa, to Watab and vicinity, on the upper Mississippi ; and, after 
the United States had squandered thousands in this removal, in a few 
years another treaty was made, and they were carried up the Minne- 
sota river ; and quite recently, as you are aware, they have been taken 
farther west. 

Until the Indians dispose of all their tribal rights to lands, these con- 
stant removals will take place. If it were understood, in future treaties, 
that they had no reservations, which they could sell, but that they could 
have a home wherever they would reside for a certain number of years, 
they would begin to take root in the soil, and traders would not try to 
transplant them, because in so doing they .would not make money. 

Last month I passed three days at the Ojibway reservation at White 
Earth lake, in northern Minnesota. The deep rich soil, the succession 
of wooded hills, clear pebble-paved lakes, and open prairies of moderate 
extent, together with the saw-mill and houses erected, with the farms 
opened, make it a most desirable spot for any man, but especially an 
Indian, to spend his days ; yet, mark my words, although I am not a pro- 
phet nor the son of a prophet, there will be no homes there. As soon as 
the Indians owe enough to the traders, and white men want the country, 
tales of depredations will begin 5 influences will be brought to bear at 
Washington, and a new treaty will be negotiated, the improvements will 
be u sold for a song," and if the United States chooses to be outwitted 
they will allow another reservation to be held by the Indians, in order that 
another farce, as every man on the frontier esteems it, may be enacted. 
Not only the lack of fixed habitations, but another drawback to Indian 
civilization, is an acknowledgment of their heathen laws and customs. 

* Extract from the manuscript memorial of DTberville on the country of the Mississippi, 
copied from the original in the arc-hives at Paris. The same memorial also says : " It is 
imprudent to accustom the savages to be spoken to by presents, for with so many, it would 
cost the King more than the revenue derived from the trade. When they come to us it will be 
necessary to briDg them in subjection, make them no presents, compel them to do what 
we wish, as if they were Frenchmen.'' 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



11 



FORCE OF TRIBAL LAWS AND CUSTOMS. 

It was with admiration that I listened to the clear exposition of the 
relations of our government to the Ojibways in the council at Chippeway 
agency. Yet I felt humiliated when the honorable Commissioner of 
Indian Affairs of the most powerful nation in the world, in answer to a 
query by a degraded savage as to what was to be done about the murder 
of Hole-in-the-day, the head chief of the tribe, who was shot down in sight 
of the agency by two Indian young men, well known to all, and boast- 
ing of their sneaking dastardy as an act of prowess, was forced to reply, 
in accordance with treaty stipulations, that although the murder was 
committed in the State of Minnesota, yet as it was within the Indian 
reservation the white man's law could not protect nor operate; thus 
acknowledging these degraded people, as a nation, an imperium in impe- 
rio. As long as the Indian tribes are recognized within our borders as 
separate nationalities to which our laws are not applicable, I am sure 
that with your discrimination and experience you cannot be sanguine 
relative to their improvement. In addition to the recognition of tribal 
law, we have degraded them and lowered our own dignity by encourag- 
ing their heathen customs. Why should we, a civilized people, con- 
descend to attend councils with a company of savages who have passed 
hours in decorating themselves with more care than Parisian fops % If 
it was once understood that no Indian could be admitted to the presence 
of a government official, except in a civilized dress and with a clean face 
and a clean shirt, and that they must transact business according to the 
usages of business men, quickly would the streaking of their bodies with 
vermillion, chrome green, or lamp-black be discarded, and they woidd 
learn to dress in modern coats, perhaps at first like the robe of Joseph, 
of many colors, but in time they would become neater and less gaudy. 
If Congress has thought it a matter of sufficient importance to enact how 
the representatives of the nation abroad shall be attired at public recep- 
tions, why shoidd they not pass a law that no Indian agent shall tole- 
rate a savage dance in his presence, nor encourage them to daub their 
faces with cheap paints and appear half naked in council % 

INFLUENCE OF INDIAN PRIESTS. 

Moses, by those who do not concede his inspiration, is recognized as 
a sound statesman and legislator, and he felt that the Hebrews could 
not be brought out of Egyptian darkness as long as Egyptian customs 
were tolerated. In Egypt, the cutting of the hair in a certain way was 
an idolatrous rite; wisely, therefore, was it enacted, "Ye shall not round 
the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy 
beard." If in connection with heathen worship a kid was prepared in 
a certain way, it was not puerile to enact " Thou shalt not seethe a kid 
in his mother's milk." As long as the old customs of the savage are pre- 
served, their priests are not disturbed,for they retain their influence over the 



12 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



tribe. They only become alarmed when feasts and dances decrease, and 
blankets and medicine sacks are thrown away. The Bev. G-. H. Pond, a 
Presbyterian missionary among the Sioux of Minnesota for thirty years, 
in a communication to the Historical Society of that State, remarks that 
there are from five to twenty -five sacred men in each of the small bands of 
the Sioux, and enraged at the decreasing reverence to the symbols of the 
gods which they had painted and placed on the hills, they seized the 
time when our nation was in civil war to regain their power, and after 
their defeat at the battle of Wood Lake they admitted that the doom of 
their gods was sealed ; and from that day the influence of Christianity in 
that tribe has increased.* 

What we suppose are curious usages often have deep religious signifi- 
cance, and it is not wise to even laugh at their seeming follies. The mis- 
sionaries who have labored more than a generation among the Dakotas 
and Ojibways do not expect their civilization to any extent until our 
laws extend over them and their customs are abolished. 

Educated as you have been at one of the oldest colleges of America, 
in sympathy with all that will tend to make men happier here and 
beyond the grave, with experience as a former member of Congress, I 
am sure that, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, you will do everything 
that is practicable to give the Indians homes, to abolish their heathen 
rites and customs, and bring them, as the white and black men of the 
country are, under the protection of the laws of the United States. 

EDWAED D. NEILL. 

Hon. K G. Taylor, 

Copimissioner of Indian Affairs. 

* The influence of the Indian priest was seen during the attack on Colonel Forsyth's brave 
little band, on the Dry Fork of the Republican, on the 17th of last September. A narrator 
of the conflict says: "The Great Medicine Man appeared in full regalia, and, beating his 
drum, he sang a song which amounted in substance to this: 'The medicine is good ; the 
Great Spirit is with us ; the bullets of the pale faces won't strike the brave ; only cowards 
are killed by them ; I am not afraid of them. You must kill the white soldiers, or the Great 
Spirit will foisake us, our medicine be bad, our children and women die of starvation. War- 
riors, be brave.' He sang in a loud, monotonous voice, riding about in circles among the 
warriors, swinging his body to and fro, and beating furiously with a stick upon his drum. 
To show how harmless the bullets of the whites were, the Medicine Man rode around, 
beating his drum and singing about his good medicine and bravery." 



APPENDIX. 



LETTER 

OF THE 

LONDON COMPANY TO THE VIRGINIA COLONY 

UPON INTELLIGENCE OF THE INDIAN MASSACRE IN 1622. 

NOW FIRST PRINTED. 



"August the first, 1622. 
" To our very loving f rends Sr. Francis Wyatt Knight , governor and captaine 
generall of Virginia, and to the rest of the counsell of State there : 
"After our very hartie comendations, wee have, to our extreame grief, 
understood of the great Massacre executed on our people in Virginia, 
and that in such a manner as is more miserable than the death itself. 
To fall by the hande of men so contemptible ; to be surprised by treach- 
erie in a time of known danger j to be deafe to so plaine a warning, as 
we now too late understand was last yeare given ; to be struck on an 
occasion of so great suspition and jealousie as was Henemathanewe's 
death; not to perceive any thing in so open and generall conspiracies 
but to be made in parte instruments of contriving it, and almost guiltie 
of the destruction by a blindfold and stupid entertaininge of it, which 
the least wisdome or courage sufficed to prevent on the point of execution, 
are circumstances that do add much to our sorrow, and make us to con- 
fesse that it is the heavie hand of Allmighty God for the punishment 
of our and your transgressions; to the humble acknowledgment and 
perfect amendment whereof, together with ourselves, we seriously advise 
and invite you, and in particular earnestly require the speedie redress 
of those two enormous excesses of apparell and drinkeing, the crie whereof 
cannot but have gon up to Heaven, since the infamie hath spredd itself 
to all that have but heard the name of Virginia, to the detestation of all 
good minds, the scorne of others, and our extreame griefe and shame. In 
the strength of those faults undoubtedly, and the neglect of the divine 
worshipp, have the Indians prevailed, more than in your weaknes. Where 
the evil therefore spring, the remedy must first begin, and an humble 
reconciliation be made with the Divine Majestie, by future conformitie 
unto His most just and holie lawes, which doinge we doubt not but that 



14 



EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 



you shall be safe from the hands of all your enemies, and them that hate 
you, from whom, if God's protection be not with you, no strength of sit- 
uation can save you, and with it, we doubt not, but where you be, you 
may make yourselves as secure as in any other place whatsoever, and in 
all other respects. ####### 

" As for the authors thereof, we cannot but with much griefe proceed to 
the condemnation of their bodies, the saving of whose soules we have so 
zealously affected; but since the inocent blood of so many Christians 
doth in justice crie out for revenge, and the future securitie in wisdom 
require, we must advise you to roote out from being any longer a people 
so cursed, a nation ungratefull to all benefitts, and uncapable of all good- 
nesse ; at least to the removall of them so farr from you as you may not 
only be out of danger, but out of feare of them, of whose faith and good 
meaning you can never be secure. Wherefore, as they have merited, let 
them have a perpetual warre without peace or truce ; and, although they 
have desired it, without mercie, too. Yet, remembering who we are 
rather than what they have been, we cannot but advise not only the 
sparing but the preservation of the younger people of both sexes, whose 
bodies may by labor and service become profitable, and their minds not 
overgrowne with evill customes, be reduced to civilitie, and afterwards to 
Christianitie. And, because there is a necessitie not only in the thing 
itself, but in the speediness of effecting it, we think it fitt that, besides 
that certaine way of famishing, (whereunto, we doubt not, but you have 
ere this given a good beginning by the burning of their come, or the 
reaping it to your owne benefitt,) you add and putt in execution all other 
waiesand meanes of theire destruction, not omitting so much as to provoke 
their neighbouring enemies (by the reward of beads and copper upon the 
bringing in of their heads,) to the fierce pursuing of them, and that at 
such times especially as yourselves may issue out upon them likewise, 
which we think should be often don from all parts of the collony 
together. But for a full securing of yourselves, and a certain destroy- 
ing^ of them, we conceive no meanes so proper nor expedient as to main- 
taine continually certaine bands of men of able bodies and inured to the 
countrie, of stout minds and active hands, that may, from time to time, 
in several bodies, pursue and follow them, surprising them in their habi- 
tations, interrupting them in theire hunting, burning theire to wnes, demol- 
ishing theire Temples, destroying^ theire canoes, plucking upp theire 
weares, carrying away theire come, and depriving them of whatsoever 
may yield them succor or relief; by which means in a very short while 
both your just revenge and your perpetuall security might be certainly 
effected. 

" As for the maintenance of those men with vittuals and munition, we 
conceive it just and equall that it shoidd be a generall levy throughout 
the whole collony, in regarde whereof the one moyitie should be unto the 
collony for fortification and other public uses, and the other moyitie 
divided amongst the Souldiars themselves. In further satisfaction of 



KB 1 2.8 




EFFORT AND FAILURE TO CIVILIZE THE INDIAN. 15 

whose travells and hazards, Ave do purpose a liberal! recompense out of 
the labors of those yong people which, by his Majestie's gratious favor, 
we hope to obtaine out of the severall counties of this kingdom, which, 
as it shall be bountifull to all, so it shall be redoubled to them, unto 
whose hands the principalis, either in execution or contrivement of this 
treacherie, shall fall ; but if any can take Opechancano himself, he shall 
have a great and singular reward from us. 

u As for those Indians whom God used as instruments of revealing 
and preventinge the totall mine of you all, we think a good respect and 
recompense due unto them, which by a good and carefull education of 
them may best be expressed and satisfied, whereby they may be made 
capable of further benefitts and favors." 



